Summertide

First edition (publ. Del Rey Books)
Cover art by Barclay Shaw

Summertide (1990) is a science fiction novel by American writer Charles Sheffield, the first of his series of . The story takes place millennia in the future, with humans having extensively colonized our spiral arm of the Milky Way and having encountered a number of intelligent alien races. Littered throughout the galaxy are hundreds of massive abandoned engineering projects built by a mysterious race, referred to as The Builders, extinct for three million years. An eclectic group of scientists and opportunists are descending upon one such artifact at a time when its surrounding environment is extremely dangerous to study an unusual phenomenon.

The novel includes excerpts from the Lang Universal Artifact Catalog (Fourth Edition), describing several Builder artifacts.

Divergence is the next book in the series.

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v t Bibliography of Charles Sheffield
The Proteus Universe	(1978) (1989) Proteus In The Underworld (1995)
The	Summertide (1990) Divergence (1991) Transcendence (1992) Convergence (1997) Resurgence (2002)
Other novels	(1979) My Brother's Keeper (1982, revised 1998) (1982) (with David Bischoff) (1983) Between the Strokes of Night (1985) The Nimrod Hunt (1986, revised 1993) (1988) (1992) Cold as Ice (1992) Godspeed (1993) (1993) (1994) - With David Bischoff The Ganymede Club (1995) Higher Education (1995) The Billion Dollar Boy (1997) (1997) Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1997) (1998) The Cyborg from Earth (1998) (1999) (2001) (2002) (2002)
Short fiction	"A Braver Thing" (1990) "Georgia on My Mind" (1993) "The Diamond Drill" (2002)